When Hard Work Goes Unrewarded
There is this one cliche in modern day society that I have a bone to pick with: the one that says that if you work hard, success is sure to follow. And that you should be deserving of all the praise and shoulder pats that come with it provided you put in enough elbow grease.
From movies to self-help books, this cliche is so deeply ingrained in our culture and beliefs, that you might actually start to believe that this is an absolute truth. But what if you put your heart, mind and soul into something, but are unable to reap the fruits of your labor? What does that say about you as a person? Does that make you a failure? Or has your environment failed you instead?
Suddenly, you may find yourself having more questions than answers and your faith thoroughly shaken.
A few days ago, I stumbled upon an article on HackerNews wherein a young programmer took some time to reflect on his life and career. More specifically, he reflected on his startup failures and lack of support from his environment in his entrepreneurial endeavours. And how unfulfilling it all turned out to be considering the sacrifices he felt he had made. For instance, rather than hanging out with friends, he spent countless hours writing code ever since he was 10. But now at age 26, it seemed he had little to show for his efforts. How was this possible? He put in all the hours and work right? Where was his reward for all this? Filled with regret, he now wished he had never touched a computer.
I’ll be the first to admit that I initially dismissed that article as being a cry for attention. Something about it just rubbed me the wrong way on my first reading: in my mind, he seemed to put the onus of his failures on his environment rather than owning up to it himself. In hindsight, that was probably largely attributed to the writing style and cultural differences we may have. And the fact that he might really be feeling down on his luck.
Said article has been removed at the time of this writing, and out of a new found respect for the author, I won’t refer to it directly. It’s the underlying idea of the article that I wanted to focus on anyway of hard work supposedly resulting in rewards. It’s a belief I too have held in my early twenties. Now being a decade wiser, I’d like to reflect on those beliefs and point out the potential fallacies I feel they hold. And how keeping this cliche alive may cause a sense of entitlement that limits personal growth.
To that end, this article will contain some Real Talk™ that helped me grow as a person and tech entrepreneur. It’s the kind of “honest” talk that you may not hear from your friends and family, but that I have no problem sharing with you as a stranger on the internet. I realize that for some, its message may come across as stating the obvious. For others, I feel it may be able to provide insights that they would have otherwise had to learn the hard way (like myself).
You are not special
Growing up, you may find yourself in the fortunate position of being surrounded by technology. You may even find yourself developing a passion for said technology at an early age. And after following some KhanAcademy courses, you may even become proficient at making apps in your early teens. Impressing your family and friends with these seemingly rare skills, you might even start to think that you’re special. All while being blissfully unaware of the possibility that you might be a big fish in a small pond instead.
Like the author of the article mentioned in the preamble, I too had been writing code since the age of 10. I even skipped out on most social activities as a young adolescent to pursue the goal of being able to write any app my imagination could conceive. For all intents and purposes, I was considered a whizkid by my peers growing up. But so was my co-founder. And so were most of my co-workers at Phusion. And to drive the point home, so too were 99% of the people in our Computer Science cohort — many of which I consider far smarter people than myself. Did all of us go on to succeed in creating unicorns based on this fact alone? No, and it’d be silly to think that business success is solely reliant on technical prowess.
Having a decade or two of experience in writing code makes you just that; really good and experienced at writing code. It can contribute to your problem solving skills, but it doesn’t necessarily lead you to stumble upon an idea of significant value to the world. Just like being able to wield a knife doesn’t necessarily make you a great restauranteur, being able to write code doesn’t necessarily make you a great entrepreneur.
That shouldn’t dissuade you from pursuing those kinds of goals though. Just don’t be surprised if the outcome doesn’t turn out to be in your favor. And while we’re on the topic of realistic outcomes, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind you of the fact that 9 out of 10 startups are destined to go belly up. That leaves 1 out of 10 startups to survive. And depending on your measure of success, survival may not be enough: in the case of venture backing, you might need to exit at $1B+ valuation to be considered a success. And those chances aren’t great either.
Once you look at these numbers and realize that you’re most likely not going to end up being the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, you can focus on becoming the best you that you can be (thanks Maykel Loomans for reminding me of this). This may be a life-long quest that may not have the expected outcome, but the journey of self-improvement is what I think matters. Developing a sense of humility is key here.
Stop blaming others for your misfortunes
It’s easy to blame external factors for failures you may have endured. And even though this may provide you with temporary solace, I have found it to be much more productive to inspect the events leading up to failure instead. Especially in the long run, as it allows you to take measures to prevent similar failures from reoccurring.
This is a lesson I learned early on in life when playing fighting games against my big brother. In a similar fashion as pro-player Justin Wong is spamming projectiles below, so too did my brother pepper me with hadoukens at age 8. After initially complaining about the cheapness of the move (and getting absolutely nowhere), I eventually asked him how I could best deal with those situations: projectiles as he explained, turned out to leave a large opening in their recovery and could be easily punished if they are spaced improperly. In other words, I just needed to pick and choose a place and time to jump over them! Suddenly, projectiles didn’t seem so cheap anymore!
This is just an example of how the simple act of asking yourself or others how you can deal with the situation leads to new insights. So the next time you get turned down at a job interview or a VC funding round, ask your interviewer in a candid manner what you could have done better. You would be surprised at what you can learn from evaluating failures like that. And yes, it may be scary to be confronted with your deficiencies, but it is important to be able to itemize what you can improve on. You can put in all the hours you want applying for jobs or raising rounds, but if you don’t understand why you are failing, it will be an endless journey without reward. Keeping an open and analytical mind is key here. A little bravery doesn’t hurt either.
Comparison is the thief of joy
The title of this section is a famous quote by Theodore Roosevelt. It serves as a reminder that looking too much into what others are doing, might diminish the joy you get out of your own achievements. So don’t compare yourself to others if all it does is make you unhappy as an entrepreneur. Instead, consider choosing a different measure of success; one that doesn’t anchor its achievements to others’.
Whatever measure you end up choosing, feeling sorry for yourself is arguably the most counter-productive thing you can do in startup land: while you wallow in your sorrow and complain about your misfortunes, others won’t. They will continue their unrelenting quest for world domination. The world simply won’t stop for you to play catch-up.
Moreover, does it really matter if your competitors or peers are enjoying more success than you do? That is, do they really need to fail for you to succeed? Or is the market large enough to provide for you all in a comfortable manner? If anything, try to see your competitor’s success as a validation of opportunity within your market.
The key here I feel is that rather than competing against others, you should try to compete only with yourself. In other words, try to be a better person today than you were yesterday. Time and focus are finite resources, and I think this is one of the more productive ways you can end up spending them. Even if that means that you’re running slow, just remember that you’ll be lapping those who remains sitting on the couch.
Curb your expectations
I’ve been a big fan of the Arctic Monkeys ever since their debut album “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”. Apart from the fact that the album title has some tangents with what I’m about to cover, their music has helped me through some late night work sprints at Phusion. Every now and then, in between the fast guitar riffs, I feel their lyrics provide some nice insights into life as well:
Anticipation has the habit to set you up, for disappointment in evening entertainment but, tonight there’ll be some love, tonight there’ll be a ruckus yeah regardless of what’s gone before.
In my mind, the above can be interpreted as that the expectation of winning often leads to disappointment. And that when being presented with a new opportunity to win, past disappointments are blissfully forgotten in favour of adopting a new sense of expectation. And so, the cycle of expectation to disappointment perpetuates.
If we were to assume that the Arctic Monkeys are right, then it is basically up to you to be honest and brave enough to keep past failures in mind when setting out on a new venture. And to learn when to break the cycle by calling it quits if you keep failing without understanding why.
That’s admittedly not an easy thing to do when success appears so easily attainable when looking through the lens of the media. Raising multimillion dollar rounds and exiting at $1B+ rates seems to be the norm, whereas in reality, they are the exceptions. Focusing on these types of successes may lead to a skewed outlook on reality, where one is inclined to forget that 90% of startups fail. Sturgeon’s law indeed.
There is no shame however in pulling the plug on a failing startup. In fact, it may be the best thing that could happen to you as it can open up new opportunities that don’t necessarily need to be startup related. Happiness comes in many forms, and startups might just not be your thing in the end. And that’s totally OK.
If anything, I hope I have been able to share with you that wanting something really bad and putting in the elbow grease for it simply doesn’t cut it; rather than working hard, I feel you should try working smart.
Lastly, if you’re really hellbent on keeping an expectation in mind despite all this, you can expect that it is statistically speaking much more likely for you to fail than to succeed as an entrepreneur. And to count your lucky stars if you happen to be the 1 out of 10 startups that manages to survive. That doesn’t necessarily make you special though, but rather lucky.
